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Problogger Book

أبريل 12, 2008 في 1:17 م · Filed under Problogging, Tips

Problogger BookChris Garrett and Darren Rowse, two people that I highly respect, and who are both directly responsible for my career and inspiring its continued growth have come together and published a book on blogging called simply enough Problogger.

From Chris Garrett:

The book is our combined experiences in professional blogging. Making a full time income either directly or indirectly by building effective blogs.

I haven’t had a chance to give it a once over yet, as neither Chris nor Darren have sent me the sample chapter which you can get by signing up for the e-mail list on the book’s site. (contact me guys) I do plan on purchasing the book to review it, as well as maybe learn a few more tricks on how to get myself closer to their level.

Here are some things that you will probably learn from the book:

  • How Bloggers Make Money
  • Direct Income Earning vs. Indirect Income Earning methods
  • Why Niches are Important
  • 20 Ingredients for a successful blog post
  • Optimizing advertising
  • Which advertising platforms work best
  • Expert analysis of Technorati’s Top Blogs – why they work

Some other details about the book include that it is 280 pages long, and will be published by Wiley on April 18th and should begin shipping on the 28th. All of the attendees at SOBCon are going to get a copy.

Will it be worth the money, or is this another book that’s a great idea, but gives information that most people can’t replicate due to the ever changing rules online? There is no such thing as timeless advice when it comes to making money online, but Chris Garrett and Darren Rowse are names that I know and trust, so if nothing else, this books should be inspirational.

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Don’t Post About Holidays

مارس 25, 2008 في 4:35 م · Filed under Tips

I can’t tell you how many posts I saw about Easter. I understand that it is a holiday, and that it has a religious slant, but letting me know it is Easter, and hoping I have a good one is really a waste of a post.

There are so many other things you could do to separate yourself from the hundreds of others mentioning the holiday and wishing people well. Tell me something interesting about Easter or connect the Easter theme to your blog. Tell me how the Easter Bunny would make a great blogger, or what my favourite devices would look like if given the Easter colour treatment.

You are wasting time, space, and energy mentioning the holiday and not expanding on it. If you want to fade into the background, then feel free to post about the holidays. If you want to stand out, and capture my attention, use a holiday as a springboard into an amazing post.

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Do You Read More Than You Write?

مارس 18, 2008 في 12:33 م · Filed under Tips, Writing

One of the issues that I have is my obsession with learning new things. This obsession leads me to subscribe to way too many blogs in hopes of finding great things that inspire me to write, but it also takes away the time I have for writing. At one point, I was spending half of my day reading a variety of RSS feeds in Bloglines.

I have since cut that down and can go through my daily read list in around an hour or two, but when you add on the forums I participate in, the social networks, and things like Twitter, I am back reading more than writing.

Reading can be a great source of inspiration and content, but I find that living my life, exploring my interests, and disconnecting from my normal routine makes me much more productive than the days where I ingest content all day until I am so overloaded with information, I can’t remember things that happened two minutes ago.

If you are recovering from St. Patrick’s Day partying, and you have the option to get off work early and just recharge and relax, I suggest you use it. Get out of your normal routine, disconnect from the Internet and put pen to paper or fingers to notepad, and just crank out some new, original, interesting posts.

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Diversification and Me

مارس 8, 2008 في 12:29 ص · Filed under Site News, Tips

You have probably all heard the saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”, and that holds true with working on the web. Never work for just one company, even if they are willing to pay you full time. Do as I have done, and make sure you have some projects of your own to fall back on, just in case. Never work on just one blog, as Google can be fickle and destroy the traffic, and thus revenue of a blog overnight. Never invest all your money in one idea, as there can be unforeseen complications that can ruin you.

It is with this in mind that I will be expanding my own blogging related business to include some new sites that will be launched very shortly. I am on the hunt for writers, and I am bringing my wife in to help with the book keeping and scouting talent.

If you are interested in writing for me, please use my contact form and send me links to samples of your work, as well as some details about yourself, your expertise, your passions, your contact details and lastly your current rates for 250 word news coverage posts (where you add your opinion to a quoted piece of text), and a 500-1000 word original article.

I will be setting a fair bit of time aside for these projects, from promotion, management and even training. If you want to learn from me and my experiences, working with me would be the best way to do that, so if you are interested, please apply.

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Blogging for Money: Learning to Sell

مارس 3, 2008 في 3:06 م · Filed under Advertising, Tips

Steve Pavlina is one of those guys I would love to sit down with and just pick through his brain. His blog is very inspiring and always interesting. His articles are long, but well thought out. His advice is helpful, but never condescending. Suffice to say, I really enjoy his stuff. When perusing through his archives, trying to catch myself up, I noticed a post entitled “Blogging for Money“.

One of the sections, also one of the longest parts, is where he brings up that bloggers need to learn to sell.

Eventually I figured out that if I wanted to run a business, I needed to learn how to generate income. This meant I had to focus on income-generating activities, and game development wasn’t one of them. I made the decision to become active in the Association of Shareware Professionals, a trade association for independent software developers like me. That was an incredibly eye-opening experience for me. I met people (online) who were making $50K, $100K, $250K a year selling their own software. In many cases when I saw their products, I felt I had much better technical skills, but they had customers, and I didn’t. I made some good friends and picked their brains as much as possible, and they were happy to share what they knew. What I learned really surprised me. Most of the people who were doing well financially spent less than half their work time developing software, often much less. But they invariably spent a lot of time working on marketing and promoting their businesses. By comparison I’d been spending about 80-90% of my work time on product development.

I don’t think there could be better advice for pretty much anyone in any business, but bloggers specifically, including myself, generally seem to have a problem with this. I know many successful bloggers that will back Steve up in his statement.

My eyes have slowly been opened to this reality, and I hope if you are reading this, you won’t have to take the long, hard road to slowly realizing that selling is important and make it your top priority. Content is king, but if you never earn a return on your work, will you continue to create such content? If you are in it to make money, I highly doubt that you will.

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Expand Your Skills Beyond Blogging

فبراير 21, 2008 في 11:44 م · Filed under Problogging, Tips

Bloggers of the world, I hope I won’t shock or upset you when I say this, but if your only skill is writing, go work for a news paper or magazine. Bloggers need to have a wide range of skills, whether you are working for yourself or working for a blog network, the more things you can do, the more valuable you will be.

The average blogger in a blog network is just a content generation machine. It is the marketing, advertising, server team, and many others that really make most blogs into profit generation machines.

As we continue to move forward, one thing I am noticing is that there is lots of competition for blogging related jobs. So if you can’t set yourself apart from the crowd, you won’t get the job you are looking for.

Learn how to do more with the blogging software you currently use. Learn how to do marketing, advertising, basic server support, upgrading WordPress, and a myriad of other skills, as they will stand you in good stead.

I probably wouldn’t still be doing this full time if all I was doing was writing because, and to be quite honest, I am not that great of a writer. I love writing, but I am like a pianist that plays random notes and doesn’t know any real tunes. Sometimes it might sound good, but I am only faking it.

Thank goodness I know how to do other things.

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Patience is the Key to Success

فبراير 19, 2008 في 8:53 ص · Filed under Problogging, Tips

There are so many people handing out advice all the time on how you can become more successful that it can become so confusing. I am here to tell you that the only piece of advice that you truly need to become a success online is patience. I have been blogging for around five years now. I have been a full time blogger for two and a half years, and the people that are making the big bucks, getting noticed online, and will continue to do so are those that are patient.

Darren Rowse didn’t expect to make blogging his full time job. And even as he began to profit from it, he didn’t jump in hastily. He took his time, and took the appropriate steps to get to where he is today. The same goes for pretty much every other blogger out there. While it might feel like they all achieved success overnight, you have to remember that they went through a long process to get to where they are today.

I compare it to the old question, would you take a million dollars today, or starting today with a penny, and doubling it each day for a month? Those that chose the quick route are left with a million dollars. Those that took the doubling route end up with nearly eleven million by months end. (source)

Patience is more than a virtue, it is the key to success.

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Promises and Living Up To Them

فبراير 6, 2008 في 3:11 م · Filed under Productivity, Tips

As a network backed blogger, I am under constant pressure to perform well beyond the average blogger, and especially because of my more technical background, I find myself as the only person able to step up with regard to certain tasks, which doubles my to-do list. The hardest problem I have is living up to the promises I make people.

With so much on the go, it seems like my list of things to do is never ending, and add to that my inability sometimes to properly prioritize, and you have a situation where I constantly am setting myself up to underperform in the eyes of someone.

Recently, a friend of mine questioned me on why I had time for “project x” and not his “project y”? Another person asked me why I hadn’t made any progress on another project. And I always find myself feeling like I am starting my week behind with regards to how much work I want to get done versus how much work I accomplish.

What I am quickly realizing is that I have to stop adding new projects to my plate, and I have to stop promising to get this, that and the other thing done for people. Between my full time job with Splashpress (that usually ends up being more than “full time”), this blog, and my wife, I really don’t have much time to enjoy myself.

If you are looking to become a full time blogger, my new advice which I will be shouting from the rooftops is to never promise more than you can deliver. In fact, take a lesson from Scotty from Star Trek. Always under promise and over deliver. Or more simply, give yourself extra breathing room, so you look amazing when you deliver before your own cut-off deadline.

I can’t tell you what it is like to constantly feel over worked, under appreciated and scatterbrained, living minute to minute on information overload and having some wonderful physical signs (chest pains) reminding you to slow down.

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Browser Limitations: Let Me In!

يناير 28, 2008 في 6:51 م · Filed under Tips

This is just a quick rant on something I noticed that is very frustrating to me, and I am sure, others: browser limitations.

You are browsing the web with your favourite browser, and come to a site that has a huge notice letting you know your browser isn’t compatible with the site you are trying to visit. It then lets you know that you should be using Internet Explorer.

My reaction is always the same, “are you serious!?”

I don’t understand why so many companies create such walls based around browsers. I can understand putting up a warning before showing the site. Let me know that my browser might not display things correctly, or certain features may not work, and then allow me to click a button to see your site, despite those facts.

Surely, it can’t be too difficult to create such a system where I, the user, has the choice to continue because I can tell you right now, I won’t be hopping onto Internet Explorer just to view your site. I will move on, and complain endlessly about your choice to not let me in.

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Stop Bolding Every Keyword and Phrase

يناير 21, 2008 في 8:22 ص · Filed under Tips

Okay, I understand that bolding keywords might help you rank higher in search engines for that keyword, as you are giving importance to it, but I am pretty sick of reading blogs that bold every keyword or phrase they want to rank well with.

As a regular visitor, I find it distracting to see so many words bolded. And I really think it makes the blog look spammy and unprofessional.

If you want to attract attention to key words, use them as section headings, bold them once or twice, but not all the time. Otherwise, I won’t be coming back, and I am sure there are others that will agree.

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